


Pennies & Dimes (For a Kiss)

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: Steve has the bright idea of selling kisses for charity. Jane's not certain why Darcy's not jumping at the chance.





	

“It’s for charity,” Steve explained patiently. Tony paused with his coffee mug halfway to his mouth and raised an eyebrow. Steve sighed. “Charity, Tony, is where-”

 

“I know what charity is, Rogers,” Tony cut over him before swallowing a gulp of coffee that burned in an almost comforting way down his throat. “Stark Industries gives approximately 5% of all total profit worldwide each year to charitable causes.” 

 

The dark haired man let out a satisfied sigh as he finished, focused not on Steve sat across the kitchen island but firmly on the cup in his hands, and ran his tongue along the edge of the coffee mug briefly. Steve, for his part, rolled his eyes. 

 

“Be that as it may, Tony,” the other man said, somewhat pointedly. “Where charity is concerned, every little helps.” It was Stark’s turn to roll his eyes, throwing the rest of the coffee down his throat and discarding the mug in the sink. He turned back to Steve, twisting on his heel and tilting his head to one side. 

 

“You might as well set up a lemonade stand in the foyer, Steve,” he said. “I know you’re all about keeping it old-school, but there are easier ways to get people to give up their money.”

 

“There’s gonna be a lemonade stand in the foyer?” Barton asked sleepily as he wandered into the kitchen, blond hair askew and mouth yawning through his words. He padded forward with one hand scratching thoughtfully at the bare skin that showed between the pyjama bottoms slung low on his hips and the ancient t-shirt he wore. 

 

Steve and Tony exchanged a look. 

 

“No, there’s not gonna be a lemonade stand, Barton,” Tony said, holding out the coffee pot towards the newcomer. 

 

“Good,” Barton mumbled, not bothering with a mug but putting his lips to the edge of the glass pot instead. Tony winced slightly watching him. Steve, who wasn’t quite as proper as most people thought, had drunk worse than coffee out of stranger things in his time and merely huffed a smile at the other man, who was yawning out the rest of what he had to say.

 

“Lemonade s’not all that anyway. Now, a coffee stand…”

 

He mumbled the rest of it into the coffee pot and Steve laughed. 

 

“Not selling coffee either, Clint,” Tony said. “Steve’s selling himself.”

 

That brought even Barton, half sleepwalking his way into the morning, to a shuddering halt. The coffee pot dropped slightly, wavering somewhere around mid-chest height, and he fixed Steve with a confused look. 

 

“Not like that,” Steve said hastily, throwing a balled up napkin at Tony’s head over the kitchen island. “Kisses. For charity. Just kisses.”

 

Barton regarded him solidly for a moment, then shrugged. “I was gonna say, Cap,” the other man said, turning most of his attention back to the coffee in his hands. “Selling yourself ain’t the picnic you might think it is. Trust me.”

 

“Uh-” Steve said, glancing at Tony. 

 

“Moving swiftly on,” Tony replied, meeting Steve’s look with a bemused expression of his own. 

 

\---------

 

“Steve’s selling kisses, for charity,” Jane said breathlessly as she pushed her way into the lab. Darcy, hunched over her laptop, scrunched up her nose in response. The other woman collapsed into a stool the other side of the bench and Darcy pulled her glasses off her nose and set them aside. 

 

“Okay,” she said slowly. “And why is that firing your buttons so much, Lady Odinson?” Jane, between puffs, waved a hand dismissively at the question. Darcy pushed her water bottle across the table and Jane took it thankfully, unscrewing it and throwing half the contents down her throat almost in one. 

 

“Firstly, Thor hasn’t actually popped the question yet-”

 

“He will,” Darcy interrupted. 

 

“-Maybe. I don’t know that I’d want to give up my work, it needs some thought…” Jane trailed off for a moment, lost in thought around the possibility of unfettered access to Asgardian technology. She shook her head as Darc smirked, and pushed herself - with some effort - back on track. “That’s not the point, though. The point is-”

 

“That you wanna kiss Steve Rogers?” Darcy interjected again helpfully, earning herself a dark look from the other side of the workbench, shortly followed by a surprisingly accurate ball.ed up piece of paper to the head. 

 

“No,” Jane said impatiently, screwing up another piece of paper in readiness for a follow up attack. “That you wanna kiss Steve Rogers.” 

 

Darcy went bright pink and ducked her head behind the laptop screen, letting a curtain of dark curls fall across her face. Jane crowed, accompanied by a small fist pump. 

 

“That’s not… That’s not true,” Darcy attempted lamely, still hiding behind the laptop as much as she was able, and her boss shot her a somewhat pitying look. Darcy rolled her eyes and sat up straight on her own stool, shoving an agitated hand through her hair and pulling it back from her face. 

 

“Alright,” she conceded reluctantly. “It’s a little bit true.”

 

Jane snorted. 

 

“Alright, it’s a lot bit true. But that’s where it ends, Foster.” 

 

“It’s for charity,” Jane pointed out, twisting the cap on the bottle top back and forward as she threw a sly look over the table toward Darcy. The other girl frowned, and tapped a few keys on her laptop, pretending the conversation was over. 

 

“It’s kind of your civic duty to kiss him,” Jane tried again, and Darcy looked up with a sigh. Jane shrugged. “You know, ‘cause it’s for a good cause and all.”

 

“What charity is it even for?” Darcy asked, shaking her head. 

 

“Orphans. Puppies. Orphaned puppies?” Jane wrinkled her nose as she tried to remember what banner had hung over Steve’s little booth in the foyer, a whole lot of super soldier wedged behind the tiny table. Darcy laughed.

 

“Okay, so I didn’t actually check that bit,” Jane admitted with a giggle and an eye roll of her own. “Does it really matter which charity he’s raising money for?” 

 

Darcy dropped her shoulders, and exhaled hard. 

 

“Look,” she said, fixing Jane with a serious expression before continuing. “I might wanna kiss Steve, but I can’t think of a sadder situation than having the only reason for it be that I’m jangling my purse and waiting in line after every other girl in this damn building.” 

 

\--------

 

Steve’s charity drive lasted a week. 

 

He’d kissed most every girl in the building. Even, with a huffed laugh, a pinked blush over his cheeks and a slight grimace, Stark. Tony had rustled up a sprig of mistletoe and puckered up outrageously, insisting that everyone watch Steve lay one on him. 

 

That Youtube clip had circled the internet a few times over, and showed little sign of abating in popularity. Steve blushed again and, with an awkward hand massaging the back of his head, said at least it had brought in donations online. Tony himself had presented Steve with an oversized cheque and declared him the best kiss he’d had all year. 

 

Pepper, a long suffering smile on her face, had dropped her own money in Steve’s bucket and kissed him gently. Jane, giggling furiously, stuffed a handful of bills at him and brought her lips to his briefly. Even Natasha had kissed him, albeit that she’d hauled him by his shirt collar into a corridor corner and kissed him long and slow, before leaving him with her money tucked into his back pocket and a slightly dazed expression on his face.

 

The one girl though, the one he’d hoped would turn up at his little formica table and present herself to him, never arrived. Steve watched out for her every day he sat there, thrumming his fingers on the table top and sitting up a little straighter every time he heard the click of heels on the marble floor, or the elevator doors ping open. 

 

Sam had shot him a disconcertingly knowing look the afternoon he’d sat with his feet up on the table and lounging in the spare chair Steve dragged over for him. 

 

“What?” Steve had said, mulishly. 

 

“Nothin’” Sam had replied, with a grin that told Steve it was absolutely more than nothing, very much in fact a something, and furthermore they both had a very clear idea of what exactly it was that was something. 

 

Darcy had to hurry her way across the foyer every day, hiding her face behind stacks of papers, or folders, or - on one memorable occasion - Thor’s shoulder. The Asgardian had been somewhat bemused by her, but indulgent nonetheless. 

 

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t contributed to Steve’s cause - which turned out to be neither orphans or puppies, but instead in aid of veterans readjusting to civilian life - she’d given Jane the money and told her to go to town on it. So, she reasoned, shoving her way through the lab door with her shoulder, arms wrapped around the cardboard box she’d just fetched up with Jane’s new equipment in it, she was absolutely in the clear. 

 

She later blamed it on the fact she’d left her glasses discarded on her laptop keyboard, but somehow Darcy missed the 6 foot and change super soldier stood in the room until he cleared his throat and she jumped. 

 

“Wow,” Darcy stuttered, as Steve leaped forward and caught the box she’d been in the process of dropping when he coughed. “Your reflexes really are good.” 

 

He quirked a small smile at her as he placed the box on the desk behind her, leaning over her to do it. Darcy sucked in a breath as Steve shifted forward, towering over her and his chest meeting her eyeline. She swallowed hard, and closed her eyes briefly. 

 

Opening them again, she found a pair of bright blue eyes regarding her cautiously. Steve had placed an arm either side of her, was caging her against the desk almost, though the span of his chest being so broad meant that he wasn’t actually having to even brush against her arms to do it. 

 

“Not, uh, not manning your booth today?” Darcy asked, in a voice she was aware was far too high to sound natural. 

 

“No,” he answered, gazing at her. “I missed a couple of people, thought maybe a mobile booth would help the cause a little more.” 

 

Darcy swallowed again, a hard lump in the back of her throat resolutely not going away however much she tried to force it away. Her heart thumped to a two-step Charleston inside her chest, and she was certain Steve’s enhanced hearing would pick up on it right away. 

 

“Jane put my money in with hers,” she said desperately, feeling a hot flush rise from her collar bone, up her neck and across her cheeks like a spreading sunset. Darcy thought fleetingly that if there were ever to be an opportune moment for Jane’s wormhole to start working, right then would be a pretty amazing time for it to just suck her into the void. 

 

“Then you’re owed,” Steve said in a low voice, still gazing down at her. If she thought his eyes dragged across her lips, she was surely mistaken. There was little about Darcy Lewis that could possibly be of interest to Steve Rogers, of that she was absolutely sure. 

 

She laughed, for want of anything better to do. 

 

“No, no,” Darcy said as a poor follow up to her awkward laughter, shaking her head fervently, and wondering how in the hell he could smell so good without a discernible scent to him. It seemed as though he were just wearing the remnants of whatever soap he’d used that morning, but it was definitely working for him. “You know, charity is its own reward and all that.”

 

Steve took a step back, and something imperceptible in his eyes dropped as he looked at her. Darcy gripped at the table edge, leaning back into it to hold herself up. The big blond in front of her cleared his throat again and looked awkward. 

 

“I, uh, I’m sorry,” he said, eyes not quite meeting hers, falling somewhere just slightly to the left. “I didn’t - I thought that maybe - never mind.” With that, he gave her a tight smile, and turned on his heel. Darcy bit down hard on her lower lip and tried to remember all the reasons she’d had for not taking advantage of the opportunity to kiss Steve Rogers, money or no money. 

 

“Steve?” 

 

He stopped with one hand on the door handle and turned his head back to her. He looked about as surprised as she did to hear her speak his name, and inclined his head slightly toward her with raised eyebrows. 

 

“I, um,” Darcy couldn’t find the right words but somehow her feet were carrying her across the floor to him, until she was planted right in front of his body with her head tipped back to be able to meet him in the eye. “I guess it’s okay to take some reward for charity every now and then, right?”

 

Steve broke into a wide grin and he nodded down at her. Hesitantly, Darcy laid one hand against his chest, and he brought his hand down her other arm, gently sliding his way to her wrist and then lifting it carefully to lay around his neck. Darcy gulped slightly as he bent toward her, and closed her eyes, resisting the urge to pinch herself. 

 

Soft lips met hers, gentle at first and then more sure of themselves. Darcy found herself on tiptoes, leaning up into his embrace as Steve deepened the kiss between them, sliding his tongue into her parted lips with a groan. He laced fingers into hers as her hand lay flat against his chest, the other feeling its way through the short hair at the back of his head. 

 

Eventually, after what felt like both hours and the briefest instant, they broke apart, lips still brushing against each other as they fought for breath. Darcy, still balanced on her toes and leaning fully against him for balance, blushed hard. She could feel the pulse of his heart under her hand as he kept it in place with his own. 

 

“So that’s what two dollars gets a girl, huh,” she breathed with a huff of nervous laughter. 

 

Steve grinned shyly and pushed back hair from her face tenderly with his free hand. Blue eyes raking across her face as she looked up at him, he leaned down to close the gap between them again and claim her lips once more. 

 

When he broke back from her, his thumb running gently over her lower lip, she giggled again. 

 

“This how you’re making money, Rogers?” Darcy asked lightly, shifting against him slightly. “Putting a girl in debt? I only paid for one kiss, remember.”

 

“I’m in your debt, Darcy Lewis,” Steve answered seriously, thumb still tracing its way over her lip, idly making little circles as he moved. “Ain’t no other girl I wanna be kissin’.” She flushed again and ducked her head against his chest, making him smile more broadly. 

 

“That okay?” He asked softly, petting through her hair, and they both felt his heart jump when she nodded carefully against his chest.


End file.
